The Iron Lady Stands Alone

"A lioness in a den of Daniels," the London Times characterized her. When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood before the House of Commons last week, opposition members and even backbenchers from her own Conservative Party hooted and jeered her for allowing U.S. planes to take off from English air bases for their bomb runs to Libya. The Prime Minister held her ground. "It is inconceivable," she stated, "that (the U.S.) should be refused the right to use American aircraft and American pilots . . . to defend their own people." The opposition was in full cry against her. Labor Foreign Policy Spokesman Denis Healey said Thatcher's decision was "a disastrous blunder" and proved that "when Mr. Reagan tells Mrs. Thatcher to jump, her reply is 'How high?' " Other Laborites vowed that if they ever returned to power, they would close down U.S. nuclear bases. Liberal Party Leader David Steel told the Prime Minister she had turned "the British bulldog into a Reagan poodle." Social Democratic Party Leader David Owen was less harsh, but maintained that Britain should have taken the Libyan issue to the United Nations. Later in the week, after two British hostages in Lebanon were murdered, apparently in retaliation for Britain's cooperation with the U.S., Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock blamed Thatcher, saying the hostages had been "abandoned to their fate."

Many in Thatcher's own Tory Party were equally unsympathetic, particularly former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, who pointed out that he had refused President Richard Nixon's request to use British bases for U.S. aircraft resupplying Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Even some members of Thatcher's Cabinet privately opposed her decision, though all supported it publicly.

In January, Thatcher had told U.S. correspondents she could not support a retaliatory strike against terrorists that violated international law. But she seemed to have come to believe with Reagan that alternatives to force in dealing with Libya had simply failed. Last week she reminded her critics of Libya's continuing support of the terrorist gangs in the Provisional Irish Republican Army and of other Libyan incidents much closer to home. Two years ago, London broke diplomatic relations with Tripoli after Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire from the Libyan "people's bureau."

Nor had Thatcher been entirely complaisant in responding to the U.S. requests. Before permitting the use of the air bases, she insisted that the raid be justifiable as self-defense. She was shown what one aide said were "compelling" reports from U.S. and British intelligence that Gaddafi had ordered the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque and planned a wide range of other terrorist activities. She also demanded promises from Reagan that the U.S. warplanes would confine their attack to "clearly defined targets related to terrorism" and avoid widespread civilian casualties.

Thatcher had other reasons too for assisting the Reagan Administration. She reminded M.P.s of the vital American military assistance in recapturing the Falkland Islands from Argentina four years ago: "We received splendid support from the U.S., far beyond the call of duty." Added one Whitehall official: "We owed Washington one."

Thatcher showed little patience for her counterparts elsewhere in Europe who refused to aid the U.S. Although the U.S. had repeatedly urged its NATO < allies to take tougher, nonmilitary action against Libya, she told Parliament, results had been "totally insufficient. She held to the view that "if one never took any action because of the risks involved, the alternative would be to be totally and utterly passive and supine before Colonel Gaddafi and anyone else who practices state-sponsored terrorism."

Although the Prime Minister's actions set her apart from fellow European leaders and much of British public opinion, her stance of gritty independence was nevertheless familiar. Thatcher, as one government official put it, "is used to being the odd person out." That role last week, as lioness and Iron Lady, served the U.S. well.